Living with Addiction - Day 42

So, I have not had any emails from the Caesar folks over the past week. Hopefully they have finally given up that I will not be coming back.  I feel fantastic.  There are so many new things I do now in the morning to help me in that timeframe. It may have taken a couple of things to keep my interest and visual stimulation going considering the game gave so much, but I'm good with my decisions to surround myself with multiple things. Chances of getting bored are not high and so far, I have not missed FB.  

I did, almost slip up the other day, and I had to think about what was going through my head in that moment. I believe it was frustration.  I am an instant gratification kind of gal, and I was using my kindle to do a puzzle and the kindle shut off right in the middle of putting the pieces on the proverbial board of the kindle. I was so mad, thankfully, once my kindle was re-charged, at least I did not have to start all over.  Still, I made a note in my head about that frustration, because I believe it may have triggered the almost play the game mode I was feeling.

Friends have been fabulous! I get text messages at least once a week and a few people call me to check in which I so appreciate.  I'm working a bigger 1000 piece puzzle and two of my friends will be joining me one night for pizza and puzzles.  I look forward to that. 

On the personal front, I'm still seeing my therapist and I am also working with a health couselor through my job. I get points for the coaching which can add up to amazon gift cards. Collecting the points also keeps the medical payments very low per paycheck as you get a discount for the quarter if you've met a certain amount of points at the end of the previous quarter.  Looking good. I'm ony 100 points shy already for meeting the goal for this quarter and there is still the rest of August and all of September left, so I am doing well all the way around.

That's all for today.

Living with Addiction - Day 32

Today was a good day. I decided to utilize my company's health care program and spoke with a health coach. It went wonderful as she reminded me of how much I've accomplished through this as well as other challenges that I've had to face throughout my life.

She recommended that I continue to journal and mentioned that I should try meditation before going to bed to help calm my mind. I usually do that in the mornings before my day starts so she thinks finishing my day the same way would help me to sleep better as lately I've been getting up every two hours or so.

My new 1000 piece puzzles came from Amazon so now I'm just waiting to get the special board which helps the pieces stay in place when they fit together and also provides a dust cover that pulls tight to keep the pieces from scattering. I'm hoping this will deter Merlin from eating the pieces or knocking the whole thing over. The health coach I spoke with also mentioned that I should do some things that I enjoy for myself that make me happy so I'm looking at things I've done in the past that I loved, rather it was coloring with crayons, or pencils or just free-writing.

So far, I'm loving the blender I got as I continue to expand my kitchen abilities which are presently slim to none. I figured doing simple things like smoothies not only offers something healthy for me to eat but these are easy to make so one doesn't get frustrated. I'm also trying to stay positive about my body image with the extra little weight. Work was interesting today as I was given a compliment on the way I looked from a co-worker which made me smile as I've been feeling a little self-conscious.

All in all, a very good day indeed.

Living with Addiction - Day 27

Good Morning -

It's been weeks now since I finally stopped playing Ceasars Slots. They are still sending me emails about new adventures and games and specials, etc. I suspect they will keep doing that hoping I'll come back to play, but I have no intention too. I'm doing so well. I wouldn't be surprised though if they send me some type of gift. Let's hope they don't, but if they do, I'll just smile and say to the universe, thanks.

I'm excited about a course I will be taking in September at College of Dupage. It's only two sessions but the class is about self-publishing through Amazon. Amazon has a program KDA, Kindle Direct. It's their version of self-publishing. The class will teach you how to upload your book on line on Amazon. I know when I was with my last publisher, she had expressed getting a book in Kindle version or on Amazon in general was complicated and rather expensive, as Amazon takes a good portion of your profits. I guess I will see and look forward to doing the sessions. 

I started working with a book The Addiction Recovery Journal, by Natalie Feinblatt, PsyD. It's kind of cool, it guides you by using prompts, practices and encouragement as you live with addiction. You can write in the book which I like. The journal is broken into six different sections: 1) Understanding Your Addiction and Recovery 2) Exploring Chronic Stress, Trauma and the Nature of Relapses 3) Managing Difficult Thoughts and Emotions 4) Building Healthy Relationships 5) Navigating High-Risk Situations and Environments and 6) Establishing a Lifestyle to Help Prevent Relaps. I'm working on Section 1 now, but I think I will move to Section 3 after that.

So far therapy is going great. I never thought how much I missed going through the years. Right now with the costs so manageable I want to take advantage of this time. I really feel empowered when I leave my therapist's office. I also think it is healthy to get out of the house sometimes. I tend to isolate myself often but I'm trying to be more sociable. The tough part will come in the colder months. Hopefully by then, I won't have any relapse and fall back into bad habits with playing the FB game.

I bought a blender so I'm looking forward to helping myself on the healthy front as I think that also has lots to do with low self-esteem and loving yourself, which I think could have easily contributed to the habitual behavior of the game. I like making food that is fun but not difficult to understand. I can certainly follow recipes, although some...well, you get the idea. I think for me, doing these Smoothies is great as they are much more easier to do. I have a recipe book as well to help. I'm not the best person when it comes to the kitchen, but I think this too will give me a sense of pride and happiness and definitely fill that boredom time in the morning before I start work.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Strange Dream

It has been a while since I remembered any dreams. I don't often have a deep sleep, and usually if I dream, by the time I wake up, I've forgotten the details.

This morning I recalled something of my dream last night. It was strange. It was as if I was in some competition. I only remember bits and pieces. At first I was running or walking or something on a difficult surface, as if it was slick outside, and I was barefoot. The next challenge was to be at some bar, singing karaoke or something, but the third leg of the competition was to meet the rest of the team for bowling.

Because I was filthy from being outside and I had no shoes, I chose to skip the 2nd challenge and went home to get cleaned up so that I would look okay and would be ready to do the 3rd challenge the bowling with the rest of the team.

I will need to talk to the therapist about this on Monday. I wish I remembered more of the dream, but if I had to guess, the dream was more about being socialable and with others.  The first challenge whereby I was running or walking on a hard surface that was causing pain and my feet were bare, seems like something I was doing alone and it made me feel icky inside. The bar with the singing, is more about recognition from the crowd if they were watching the karaoke competition. But this too, is something I would naturally be doing alone even though there were other people. Instead I skipped this to go home and hurry up and clean myself up, get dressed and in comfortable shoes to get out to the bowling alley to be with my team so I wouldn't be late for that.

Again, I look forward to talking this over with the therapist.  For now, I had to log it.

I'll keep you posted.

Living with Addiction - Day 20

So, I've reached the end of the week. This is exciting. I'm still going strong, not being tempted by the game. Although, they have sent me several emails about new specials and they are doing another build your pet type promo. I really did enjoy these PET ones as you got treats to feed your pet to help he or she grow. Well, I'm quite proud of myself that it didn't spur me to action getting that email. I've been hitting the unsubscribe option when it's available in the emails they are sending me.

Work continues to surprise me as one of my co-workers got transferred to the ASC group. I felt bad for her because that dept is truly difficult with not a lot of resources to help the requestors with their accounting issues. The dept's call volume is much larger than my billing unit, so management went to my management group to ask us for assistance.  I just hope that this will not become a trend. But in terms of employees in the dept, they still have less than us. The billing help line has assistance from offshore so I suppose this is why one of our people got transferred.

On the bright side, I got a raise, which was fantastic, given the new car payment and the publishing monthly costs for book 1 in the series to be re-released. I'm still working on book 2 of the series and already have written 17,500 words. Long way to go yet, before the book would be considered a novel, which would be like 50,000 words minimum. Ugh!.  In the meantime I am also trying to finish my memoir, so that I can enter it into the memoir contest Minerva Rising is having.  Minerva Rising was the first publication that I got something published. They published an excerpt from my memoir, so I'm hoping, given they published the excerpt, they will be interested in the rest of the memoir.  I need to get to at least 25,000 words minimum and my memoir is only at about 15,000. 

Over the past several weeks, I've been lending support to a dear friend who is going through a tough time. I think this is also helping me cope with my addiction. All the people I've shared my struggle with have been fabulous, sending me text messages to check in, etc.  Helping someone else is also contributing to my own healing. This Monday coming up I will have another appt with my therapist.  She's fabulous.

That's it for today. I'll check back soon.